Getting started and documentation feedback

[Giedrius]

@altivo

In this case, two things are being omitted from the instructions. First, every MIDI implementation I’ve ever used accepted hot plugging of controllers. If Pure Data can’t handle that, it should be stated up front. If it’s the pisound drivers, same thing. The workaround is clear enough, but without knowing that the limitation exists, I can’t be the only one who was fooled.

Every major OS has a different model of how MIDI devices are implemented. If I was designing MIDI integration to computers, I would have done it differently, but at the moment we have to follow the models already in place on our target OS, Linux. Unfortunately, the design on the system is such that it’s up to the users to set up the MIDI connections between software and hardware MIDI ports. On Mac and Windows, you usually configure which devices should be used by some particular software, from within the software’s settings, which is good for ease of use. Linux way is more complicated to use, but gives more flexibility like chaining multiple software programs to achieve computing feats not possible on other systems.

Anyway, as we ourselves see a gap of ease of use of MIDI on Linux, we will release a neat background utility called amidiauto which will take care of all the simple MIDI interconnection cases for you, and will handle hotplugging events too. It should get released some time next week.

@altivo

Second, the installation should provide a default patch that will be loaded on startup

Clicking the button once by default performs start_puredata action, it searches for main.pd in any attached external media, then in /usr/local/puredata-patches/ (Some Pure Data patches consist of many .pd files, while there’s only a single entry point file to the entire patch, our convention is to use ‘main.pd’ name for it). The first main.pd found wins. As there’s no feedback mechanism in headless use other than the MIDI LEDs, we haven’t placed a default main.pd fil to be launched by default, because even if you place your own main.pd file in there, the default one may still come up first in the search and your own patch won’t get started, which is a more frustrating scenario than no patch getting launched. For headless use, it’s best to use a couple of USB storage sticks with a patch in each one.

Also, Pisound App can be used to launch a particular patch and to import patches from USB to /usr/local/puredata-patches.

@altivo

the existing documentation for this project is too sparse and assumes far too much knowledge on the part of the reader.

I agree, it’s a difficult thing to balance, but we accept the criticism and look into ways to improve the documentation. Looks like we should include a section on Linux MIDI interconnections between software and hardware, as well as a quick guide on getting a patch to run via the button click.

Also, the documentation can be edited here: GitHub - BlokasLabs/pisound-docs - we’d gladly accept improvements from the community.